Former NYPD cop from Hempstead to plead guilty in fraud case

Carlos Becker, a former NYPD officer from Hempstead charged last year in an auto-arson insurance-fraud scheme, has agreed to a guilty plea, according to Brooklyn federal court records.

Becker, 39, a 13-year NYPD veteran, was accused in August of illegally collecting $33,000 from Geico after falsely reporting to the Nassau County police in 2012 that his Range Rover had been stolen, when he had actually arranged to have it burned.

The government alleged he kept $4,000 of the proceeds and a financing company got $29,000, and said Becker may also have been involved in making phony insurance claims on an Audi and a BMW.

He was indicted on charges of mail fraud, arson and conspiracy. An entry on the court docket Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie ordered a magistrate to hold a “change of plea” hearing and set his sentencing for April.

Brodie’s order did not specify the charge Becker will plead to, but a knowledgeable source said he was expected to plead guilty to mail fraud.

A lawyer for Becker did not respond to a request for comment, and a spokesman for Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Robert Capers declined to comment. An NYPD spokesman said that Becker, who was detained after his arrest, was terminated from his job on Dec. 8.

According to the criminal complaint filed against Becker last year, his Range Rover was destroyed by two co-conspirators whom Becker failed to pay, and one of them talked to law enforcement and later recorded a conversation with Becker.

Becker was denied bail after prosecutors said he also had been involved in assaulting women in 2013 and 2015, including one case in which he allegedly took suggestive pictures of a woman he arrested for drunken driving, pressured her into a date and took her home and assaulted her after she became groggy.

That woman, Erica Noonan, has a civil suit pending against Becker in Manhattan federal court. “It’s unfortunate whenever an officer betrays his brothers in uniform for his own personal gain,” said her lawyer Stephen Drummond after he was told of the expected guilty plea.